Ministers lay out plans to reduce gap between poorest and most affluent pupils - UK politics live

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Education secretary to face questions as government sets out plans to halve attainment gap in England’s schools

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, will be speaking to the BBC and Sky News shortly and will likely be asked about government plans to halve the attainment gap between the poorest pupils in England and their more affluent peers.

The schools white paper, set to be published in full tomorrow, will set a target to halve the disadvantage gap by the time children born in this parliament finish secondary school.

It will detail proposals to change the criteria under which schools receive funding to support the most disadvantaged students, and will set out two new programmes to tackle performance of disadvantaged pupils locally in the North East and on the coast.

The new schools white paper is expected to be published in full on Monday morning. Photograph: lovethephoto/Alamy

In the latest GCSE results, the disadvantage gap index for year 11s stood at 3.92, according to the Department for Education (DfE).

It had previously narrowed from 4.07 in 2011 to a low of 3.66 in 2019/20 with some small fluctuations in between. It then widened again post-pandemic to the highest it had been in a decade at 3.94 in 2022/23.

Phillipson, a Sunderland MP who grew up in the north-east, said the reforms will help end the “one-size-fits-all system” and present a “golden opportunity to cut the link between background and success”.

The schools white paper will also reportedly set out proposals to transform the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system, in what could be one of the defining policy challenges of Keir Starmer’s fragile administration.

Children with a legal right to special needs support will face a review when they move to secondary school, my colleagues Alexandra Topping and Richard Adams report.

The reforms will raise the bar at which children in England qualify for an education, health and care plan (EHCP), which legally entitles children with Send to get support.